Pulse to Tone Converters

Pulse to tone Converters

Are you having difficulty getting your vintage rotary dial phone to work with your modern phone system? Oldphoneworks may have the solution!

Rotary dial phones emit a series of electrical pulses that are used by the equipment at the central telephone office to route the telephone call to the appropriate destination. Dialing a "9", for instance, on a rotary dial will emit nine electrical pulses spaced approximately 1/10 of a second apart. Modern touch to phones accomplish call routing by emitting distinct tones for each number pressed on the keypad, and it is the tones that are used for call routing by the telephone company.

Unfortunately, some "modern" phone equipment, particularly certain types of internet based systems, are unable able to recognize the pulses from a vintage rotary dial. Oldphoneworks recognized this shortcoming early on and we came up with two unique solutions.

Our Pulse to Tone converter is a simple black box that is connected between the rotary telephone and the telephone jack on the wall. It intercepts that rotary pulses from the phone and translates them into DTMF tones that can be understood by the receiving equipment. The Pulse to Tone converter does add any additional functionality to a phone such as # or * dialing, it simply acts as an interpreter to allow a vintage rotary phone to continue working with a variety of newer phone systems.

In order to add additional functionality to a rotary dial telephone, Oldphoneworks came up with the Rotatone. This small black box is installed inside of a phone, where it is integrated directly into the wiring. It eliminates the need for any external equipment so the phone retains it's original appearance. Like the Pulse to Tone converter the Rotatone converts the electrical pulses from the dial to DTMF phones. In addition, the Rotatone is programmed with logic that will not only allow you to only dial * and # from a rotary dial, but it also provides the ability to store complete phone numbers in memory locations that can be instantly accessed by dialing one number on the rotary dial. Since the Rotatone does require some technical expertise to install we offer full, added cost, installation services for your convenience.

Please note that in order for either the Rotatone or the Pulse to Tone converter to work, you rotary dial must be fully functional, and the pulses that it emits must be correctly spaced. Both converters may fail to respond if a rotary dial has not been serviced and adjusted to original specifications.